Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [208]
He studied his list and diagrams carefully, referring to the original documents from time to time to refresh his mind on the details. On a map, he checked the flight of the “Feldberg Demon” from St. Blasien “in the direction of the Feldberg.” Oberhochwald lay in its path. In the end, he saw no other possible explanation. In fact, he wondered now why he hadn’t seen it earlier. What had he told Sharon that day in the restaurant? Maybe the subconscious is smarter than we think.
Or maybe not. He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, pulling his lip. He couldn’t see any obvious flaws in his reasoning; but what did that mean? Sometimes the obvious is only wishful thinking. He needed a second opinion. Someone on whose judgement—and discretion—he could rely. He copied his files and added a summary. When he looked at the old digital wall clock with its liquid crystal display, it was 03:20 hours. That meant 09:20 hours in Freiburg. He took a deep breath, hesitated, then, before he could have second thoughts, he downloaded all of it to my office, a quarter of a world away. It contained a single question: Was glaubst du? What’s your guess?
TOM’S MESSAGE piqued my curiosity. I e-mailed that a reply would require several days’ research, at least, and strolled off to the library at the Albert-Louis. There, I found some of the documents he had asked about and compared them to others he had sent. Then I searched out further documents and blew off the centuries and read them as well. Afterward in solitude, I smoked my heavy, carved, schwarzwälder pipe and in the tobacco smoke, I pondered. Dignity, we save for our old age; and what I had of it, I had earned. Yet, Tom was hardly the sort of man to leap to conclusions or to play a prank on a friend.
But a friend is a friend, and you may have noticed that he and I were duzende. We used “du” with each other, and that is no light thing.
So two days later, I scanned the documents I had found and compressed them and did all that wonderful stuff that modern technology allows; then I attached them to an e-mail. Cautiously—very cautiously—I outlined my conclusions. If Tom had the brains that God had given turnips, he could read between the lines as easily as on them. That is what “intelligence” means: inter legere.
“WHAT ARE you doing up so early?”
Tom started violently; his chair nearly rolled from under him. He caught himself on the edge of his desk and, when he looked around, he saw Sharon standing in the bedroom doorway, rubbing her eyes. “Don’t sneak up on me that way!”
“Why, how should I sneak up on you? Besides, a Mack truck could sneak up on you, you were so intent on that printer.” She yawned. “That’s what woke me up. The printer.”
She padded in her bare feet into the kitchen and turned on the teakettle. “Time to get up anyway,” she called back over her shoulder. “What are you up to at this hour?”
Tom pulled the last sheet from the printer and scanned it quickly. He had been reading my message as it emerged. “I’m linked with Anton. We’ve been IM-ing for the past hour.”
“Anton Zaengle? How is the old dear?”
“He’s fine. He wants me to come to Freiburg.” Tom flipped through the stack of printouts, riffling them with his thumb. “This is the bait to lure me there.”
She poked her head around the kitchen archway. “Freiburg? Why?”
“I think he thinks what I think.”
“Oh. Well, I’m glad you cleared that up.”
“It would take too long,” he said, “and sound absurd.”
“That hasn’t stopped you before.” She wiped her hands on a dish towel and crossed the room, where she stood behind him, leaning with both her hands on his shoulders. “Tom, I’m a physicist, remember? Next to strange, charming quarks nothing sounds ridiculous.”
Tom pulled on his lower lip. After a moment, he tossed the printouts into his desk basket. “Sharon, why would a medieval, backwoods priest need two hundred feet of copper wire?”
“Why … I don’t know.”
“Neither